This invention relates to a humidity and temperature resistant apparatus for determining the orientation of a rotatable meter hand relative to a dial spaced apart from a meter hand. More particularly, the invention is concerned with the creating and depleting a charge between a center electrode, meter hand, and an outer electrode (a pad) very rapidly to generate a current that is applied to a current-to-voltage converter, whose output is compared, by a comparator, against one or more fixed voltage reference values. A microprocessor is used to control the selection of the outer electrodes, choose a fixed voltage reference to be applied to one of the comparator's inputs and store the comparator's output state for future reference.